This site serves a dual purpose: to share fun stuff with others and to spread
information that might be of interest to those making use of it. Please do check out the
soft sell
for classical music listeners.

Additional material remains to be uploaded to this site. For a quick look
at each month's additions, bookmark the updates
page.

Try your ear at a WQRS-style contest! This
page also has links to many other midi files on this site.

Check out TeacherNet
for reviews and links to sites with music education and lesson plans. If you
enter rounds in the keyword search box, youll get many good
suggestions for ways to incorporate some of these rounds into a lesson plan.

Images of the music and lyrics as well as midi files are available for the following
rounds. You can download the midi file, usually by clicking on the right mouse
button, or if your browser supports it, listen to the music on the spot.

You may also, before loading the page with the image file, see if
it is one you know under a different name by listening to an abbreviated "sound
clip". Just click on the "soundclip" link in each description. Please note that
these are plain midi files, and do not invoke Java. If you see Java
loading, it is because your sound plugin uses it.

On the individual rounds pages, you should be able to follow
the music while listening to a midi file of the entire round (a longer sound
clip than on this page). If you can't do this, it is probably because the midi
player you're using loads its own page while it's playing. This happens with
some versions of Crescendo and some versions of Quicktime (if you use it for
midi files). It does not happen with the Microsoft Media Player or with the
version of Midigate I tested.

The purely arbitrary difficulty levels given for each round
suggest only the degree of difficulty the individual voices might have in
keeping to their parts.

This is the first of two versions of this four-part round found in the catch
collections. The second is in a minor key, and the single note difference makes
for a very different round.
The soundclip is 23 seconds long.
Difficulty level: easy.

This is the second of two versions of this four-part round found in the catch
collections. The first is in a major key, and the single note difference makes
for a very different round.
The soundclip is 23 seconds long.
Difficulty level: easy.

This is perhaps the most famous Middle English lyric. Dating from the
late thirteenth-century, it is the earliest known piece of music for 6 voices
and the earliest known canon. For a minimum of six voices.
The soundclip is 37 seconds long.
Difficulty level: complex.